Always, the Semifinals and the Finals are wars that coaches play. Just the way they map out plans for each game in a series, they believe their strategies are fool-proof.

Confidence, their shield, is as perennial as grass.

To be sure, the players have the eliminations and, partly, the quarterfinals as ready-made occasions to strut their wares. They’d graduate, willingly, into a flock of sheep come the penultimate playoffs and the moment of truth: championship showdown.

Take the ongoing semifinals of the PBA Philippine Cup at Clark/Angeles University Foundation gym in Pampanga.

Early on, you could readily pick the coach having a lock on the crown. Remember, coaches get top billing, players cameo roles.

Thus, Ginebra holding a 2-1 lead over Meralco in their race-to-three-wins isn’t news. But Phoenix up 2-1 over TNT is news because the Fuel Masters are massive underdogs against the Tropang Giga.

And why are the Kings ahead? They have Tim Cone as their coach to begin with. Cone being the league’s winningest coach readily makes him as unbeatable, almost, as when the late world heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali was in his prime. With two Grand Slams across his name, Cone’s coaching has long been the benchmark, standard, for all coaches dreaming to hit the big time.

Good coaching usually begins from gut-feel recruiting. Cone’s a master in that area. He saw something in nondescript Scottie Thompson and he gambled on that. It paid off.

Jeff Chan is practically over-the-hill. But Cone still saw something good in him: Chan’s hands still hot.

Cone caught Stanley Pringle and Ginebra was never the same again.

And from which kingdom did this Prince Caperal come from, enriching the Kings’ lineage of royalty?

And Phoenix? It rose not from the ashes of ruins but from the risks of taking in Topex Robinson, unheralded but proving to be brimming with coaching tricks.

Topex is waylaying a TNT squad already being weighed down by the horrifying fact of having a Filipino as its coach only in name and an American acting as the real coach. Can players obey two masters at the same time?

Tickle me more.